Jesse Bowers
Wait a second. Ford made a flying car over half a century ago, and we're still rolling on tires? Yes, because Ford made a floating car with success similar to the Titanic.
I’ve heard time and time again how it’s for recycling, and so they rot better and blah blah blah, but seriously, how can you recycle something that has lost all of its composure and has started to disintegrate?
No one can convince me that perpetually replacing and recycling tires is better for the world than having them last. I feel for the people looking after museums full of cars and bikes with expensive, nostalgic-style tires failing on the display vehicles. Yes, those ones rot exactly the same way civilian tires do.
As much as I love the squealing sound and the smell of the smoke as a set of radials are laid to rest on the street or the strip, I think it’s time we talk a little George Jetson. I’m talking - Flying Cars.
Here’s an obscure one for those of you like myself, who filled three tires with a carry tank yesterday and pulled a screw out of one that surprisingly wasn’t leaking. The Ford Levacar was an idea that would solve all of those problems, though it certainly isn’t a problem-free concept. The Levacar was unveiled in the later 1950s and operated similarly to an air hockey table.
Upside-down air hockey table
Air was pushed down towards the ground through several “Levapads” at pressures up to around 100psi. The Levapads looked like showerheads or the top of an air hockey table. They were on swivel bases to adjust for surface irregularities. Designed to hover only an eighth of an inch off the ground, what kind of surface could the Levacar drive on? Literally anything, with some major exclusions.
Concrete or pavement wasn’t ideal, and I can only imagine the alkali dust disaster of any gravel.
The ideal surface? Smooth steel. Not rails like a train, but something wider and flatter, exclusively designed for this type of travel.
How fast could it go? 500kmh with the right turbojet engine, apparently. How do you steer it? No idea. Also, I don’t see how you could possibly stop it.
How does it fare in a crosswind? Maybe rails aren’t such a bad idea, after all.
It wasn’t powerful enough to carry a whole family, yet it wasn’t practical enough for personal transportation due to the infrastructure needed to create a network of roads (rails?) for them to travel on, so up-scaling the project for public transportation was also off the table.
Unfortunately, it seems that the Levacar never had a definitive identity and literally went up in flames as a publicity project. I say literally, as the Levacar concept was unfortunately lost in a fire years ago. I guess I’ll just buy some more tire plugs for now and see what the future brings.
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